Merryn Somerset Webb’s Post

There are green shoots! https://lnkd.in/eu_wKGgJ

We are coming up to our summer break with the Merryn Talks Money podcast. So beginning to think about who to have on from September. Who do you want to hear from? And on what (money related) topics? Who is clever, a little contrarian and sometimes quite funny? Let us know here, or on merrynmoney@bloomberg.net

Stability is good. Markets like that. And the U.K. is cheap. But Labour have a long record of producing negative real returns for the U.K. stock market during their periods in power. You could even argue that the malaise in the market today is in part a function of Gordon Brown's pension taxation and capital gains tax policies. So don't get too excited... https://lnkd.in/e88axn83

The merger of two of the UK's investment trust greats, Alliance Trust and Witan, is not getting nearly enough attention. Great for shareholders, great for the sector, fabulous for stock markets and should give hope to active investors everywhere! Alliance is as close to proof as we will get that there is a way! https://lnkd.in/eGUi_eg3

We can save the UK stock market if we embrace creative destruction (let the great British buyout boom) and insist all directors have real skin in their game. Make them really need share prices to rise... https://lnkd.in/eRN3BGq6

There are some very good reasons to give 16 year olds the vote. That they might help you stay in government is not one of them. That they might pay tax is also very much not one of them. https://lnkd.in/eZfambnQ

Yesterday Edinburgh Council put on hold its happy sounding plans for a “friendship agreement” with Kaohsiung, a city in Taiwan. It turns out that this wouldn’t make the Chinese government very happy - and that that might have unpleasant financial side side effects, particularly for Scotland’s cash strapped universities. Do it, said the Chinese Consul General in Scotland, and there could be “serious consequences,” one of which could be the blocking of all visas for Chinese students studying in Scotland. Whoops. There are 150,000 Chinese students in the UK. Around 9000 of them are in Glasgow and around 6,850 in Edinburgh. They each pay anywhere up to £38,000 a year. It looks like they will stay for now. But the mini saga is a reminder of just how vulnerable UK universities have made themselves by relying so much on foreign students. Column from a few weeks ago here (the vulnerability of UK unis to a slow down in the supply of foreign students is not new news… ). https://lnkd.in/e_f2ntsq